One Daddy Too Many

December 13, 2006.
James C.
Dobson's op-ed piece on Mary Cheney's pregnancy in the current issue of
Time reveals his ignorance on a number of counts and says nothing
that would indicate he knows enough about parenting to be the head of an
organization called Focus on the Family.
The motto of that organization is "Nurturing and Defending Families
Worldwide." Dobson is clear that the only family he will defend is the one
with a daddy, a mommy, and kids. His best family ever would be a Christian
family. Some of those families are quite nice. The
daddy doesn't abuse the mommy and the kids aren't whacked by the parents on
a regular basis. The parents spend a lot of time with their children as they
are growing up. They nurture them, teach them important values, and love
them enough to stand back when they grow up and let them make their own way
in the world. However, unless my local newspaper editor and the managers of
every television station in America are part of a conspiracy to keep the
truth from us, the fact is that having a daddy around might be the worst
thing in the world for many mommies and kids, even Christian mommies and
Christian kids.

What inspired Dobson to write his essay
"Two Mommies is
One Too Many" was the news story that Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of
Dick Cheney, is pregnant with a child she intends to raise with her partner,
Heather Poe. Dobson's sure that the child would be better off if Ms. Poe
were replaced with a Mr. Anybody. How does he know this? Like anybody
defending the indefensible, Dobson cites scientific studies that show how
it's better to have a daddy in the home. Anyone who can't find a baker's
dozen contrarian scientists
to support the insupportable isn't trying very hard. However, Dobson cites
the work of Dr. Kyle Pruett
of Yale Medical School, who has publicly stated that "There is to date no
credible research that says children raised by gay and lesbian couples are
at risk."*. I guess
Dobson thought he could intuit Pruett's work by reading the title of his
book:
Fatherneed: Why Father Care Is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child
(Random House, 2001) and copping a few quotes that sounded to his liking.

Dobson also finds comfort in an unnamed article that appeared in
Psychology Today ten years ago. The bottom line? "A father, as a male
parent, makes unique contributions to the task of parenting that a mother
cannot emulate, and vice versa." Dobson takes this to mean that science has shown that you need
a penis to teach a child things like "justice, fairness and duty." Penisless
people can teach "sympathy, grace and care" and "give a child a sense of
hopefulness" but science has shown that you need a penis to "provide a sense
of right and wrong." We know what sense of right and wrong Mr. Cheney
has displayed publicly*lying
and deceit are right, even if it means thousands will die, as long as your
agenda is promotedbut we can only wonder what moral lessons he taught
his daughter. You may need a penis to provide a child with a sense of right
and wrong, but that doesn't mean that the sense of right and wrong you
provide is right.

In any case, Dobson's views aren't those of most
scientists who have studied the issue of raising children.Media Matters for America has noted (here,
here, and
here) that studies
have consistently found that children raised by gay or lesbian parents
suffer no adverse effects in their psychosocial development because of their
parents' sexual orientation. One exception might be that such children are
subject to taunting and physical abuse by the children of good Christians
and others with homophobic fathers.

Anyway, Dobson believes it is important that boys learn
"maleness" and they can only get that understanding from men, "ideally from
their fathers." He doesn't elaborate on what "maleness" is but given his
other Christian notions of how people should behave and relate to each
other, we can speculate that maleness involves dominating, protecting, and
providing for females and disciplining children in the tried and true
methods of hitting them and threatening them with eternal suffering if they
don't toe the line. Dobson might even recommend that fathers with "maleness"
imitate his hero, the god of the Old Testament, who drowned people or
otherwise caused them great torment and suffering before annihilating them
for not doing his will. A little
waterboarding or
death by stoning might be just the right measure for a disobedient child.

If a child has two mommies the kid might grow up too
hopeful or too sympathetic. God forbid.

Dobson also thinks that his intuition is right on this
issue. Children need a mother and father, he says. No, they don't. Children
need loving, caring parents who won't intimidate them with threats of
eternal damnation for themselves or their friends. Children would certainly benefit from
having a good mother and a good father who raise them, but they don't
need either one. A single male or female can provide a better
environment for a child than many two-parent households. It all depends on
what the parents are like, not on whether there is at least one person with
a penis and one with a vagina ruling the roost. Dobson says that he believes
that "birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples."
Yet, he would not hesitate to make it illegal for a married heterosexual
woman to get an abortion. If it were up to him, Mary Cheney would give up
her child to a married heterosexual couple. This is the kind of "maleness"
that many Christians adhere to. They would and have taken children away from
their mothers to have those children raised as Christians. What kind of
moral imbecile doesn't recognize that it is immoral to take a child away
from a mother who is willing and able to care for her child?

I'm not saying Dobson is advocating taking Cheney's child
from her. I'm saying that he is implying that it would be better for the
child if she were to give it up for adoption to a married heterosexual
couple. He has no rational argument to defend this position so he claims it is
part of "God's design" and "divine plan." He should study some other
religions. Some, with as much validity as Dobson, claim that polygamy is
god's plan. If he reads the Bible, he'll find
all kinds of absurd notions about "maleness" and how fathers act toward
children. Anyone who thinks the Bible provides a model for good family
values is not worth listening to. Read Judges 19. The story is about an old
man who gives up his concubine to a group of men who rape her all night so
they won't sodomize him. (His host was willing to offer up his daughter to
the rapists.) The next day he slices her up with his knife and
"together with her bones, into twelve pieces ... sent her into all the
coasts of Israel."*
The man is not condemned for his evil behavior. Read
Luke 14:26:
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife
and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be
my disciple.*
Nobody takes this literally, I would think. But the message is clear: You
must detach yourself from the people and things you love in this world if
you are to be a disciple of Jesus. Read
Matthew 10:34-37: Think not that I am come to send peace on
earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at
variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of
his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy
of me. Even the most benign interpretation of
this passage can't twist it to reflect the kind of family
values that many Christians like Dobson claim their religion
supports. These are the kinds of indecent values extolled by the mob and
street gangs.

Dobson makes the mistake of comparing homosexuals having
or adopting children to no-fault divorce, which he notes has caused a number
of social problems. Economic and emotional differences between fatherless or
motherless homosexual families and single parent families resulting from
divorce result in many fewer social problems with the former. When
homosexual families break up, they suffer the same kinds of problems that
plague heterosexual families that break up. But to compare every homosexual
family to divorced families is unfair and irrelevant.

Dobson's last bit of displayed ignorance is his claim that Cheney and Poe are part of "another untested and
far-reaching social experiment." Where has he been for the past half
century? The experiment is over. The data is in and Dobson's missed it. He's
living in a biblical dream world if he thinks that his idea of the
traditional family is the "foundation on which the well-being of future
generations depends."

In any case, we don't need another generation of children
taught that it is good to believe in irrational stories told by moral
busybodies who think they know what is best for the rest of us.

postscript: The news of Mary Cheney's pregnancy
caught Fox's Bill O'Reilly's
attention. Today on his television show, he rhetorically asked
Family Pride executive director
Jennifer Chrisler: "nature dictates that a dad and a mom is the optimum,
does it not?" I can't be sure, but I think he means to use the expression
"nature dictates" in pretty much the same was that Dobson uses
"intuition" or "God's
design." It's like the "I gotcha trump card because this is a
no brainer" for these folks. In any case,
even if nature did dictate how the family should be structured, that would
not prove that the structure it dictated was the best for the family
members. It would only mean that it was the best for nature and the
only meaning I can give to that infelicitous expression is that more
offspring would be produced by this structure than any other. That might be
an issue O'Reilly is interested in, but it's not one that particularly
excites me. There are many things that may be thought of as "dictated by
nature" or "natural" that are evil. Fortunately, humans are rational
creatures and are capable of recognizing that nature doesn't always know
best. If we listened to nature, for example, we would probably be providing
cultural support for polygyny.

§

(Personal disclosure: I'm heterosexual
and have been married but once and to the same woman for 39 years. We raised two
wonderful children together, both of whom are in heterosexual marriages that
appear to be strong and loving. I suppose I should also confess that I've
known a lesbian woman who gave birth to a son about 30 years ago. I've known
him all his life and he's a wonderful young man with a great sense of right
and wrong and a wife and two
children. His father turned out to be a scumbag. I've also known another
wonderful young man all his life whose mother is bisexual and whose father
is homosexual. The father is a fine man whom I'd trust with everything
precious to me. Likewise for the lad's mother. None of us go to church or
take the Bible as a guide to anything. Only one of us, as far as I know, is
spiritual.)